The first sip, a dare, a laugh, then the world blurred, softened at the edges. Suddenly, every insecurity, every awkward moment, just floated away. Weekends became a quest, for the next party, the next bottle. Sneaking sips from parents’ cabinets, the bitter taste of stolen freedom. My breath, a se...Read more

Fourteen. Just a kid. But the world felt too loud, too bright, too much. Someone offered a can, cold and fizzing, and suddenly, everything quieted. It started in basements, smoke curling around whispered secrets. That first rush, a dizzying escape. I learned to chug, to hide the smell, to laugh a l...Read more

Nobody tells you how easy it is to disappear in the space between lockers and liquor stores, how silence tastes like cherry cough syrup and cheap vodka stolen from your parent’s cabinet. I was fifteen, but my liver seemed older than the rest of me. The bottle was a friend with no expectations, no ...Read more

t doesn’t taste like anything until it does— like regret, like forgetting on purpose, like burning down what little of you is left. Vodka— clear as truth, but meaner. You don’t sip it, you swallow it whole, like blame, like the names they called you when you couldn’t stand straight. I drank in gul...Read more

They call me promising, sharp, gifted. A future wrapped in straight A’s and handshakes from counselors who beam when I speak like my words are gold and not just camouflage. I raise my hand with right answers while last night’s vodka still claws at my throat. No one notices the way I flinch at fluor...Read more

What started as fun ended as a mess. I knew alcohol was the problem I knew I shoukd stop but I didn't want to. I kept drinking and smoking and shooting and snorting just so I could feel better. The hardest thing I ever did was get sober. The long days of living uninterrupted got old quick, but I did...Read more

I don’t think I should be happiest when I’m drunk. Chemical reactions create falsified joy but maybe I’d be happier if it was real. Prosecco in the bath was fun, Vodka on the floor was fun, Whiskey on the shower was fun, Third Eye Blind in bed was fun. This was ritual but every ritual and every fun ...Read more

It started with a red cup at someone’s brother’s party— too loud, too dark, too much everything. And I drank. It burned like truth and felt like permission. By thirteen, I knew how to hide it: mouthwash, eye drops, a tilted smile in morning classes. I memorized the lie: I’m just tired. I’m just fi...Read more

I was eleven the first time I sipped away my problems, a cold sip of vodka down like a secret in the garage under flourecent lights and the hum of nothing to do. It tasted like burn and rebellion. Like maybe I could be someone else for a minute. By twelve, I knew which friends wouldn’t ask, which ...Read more

I don’t pretend anymore. The lie is worn out, like the soles of my shoes tracing the same cracked sidewalk to the same corner store. My hands don’t shake until they’re empty. Then they become strangers grasping at ghosts in brown paper bags. I tell myself it’s just one more. One more to shut out t...Read more

You sit where I swore I’d never see you again— bottle half-drained, still sweating in the dark, like you never left. You wear my fingerprints like trophies. You know what I’ll do before I do it. Some nights I bargain: just a sip, just enough to take the edge off, just to sleep. But you don’t deal ...Read more

No one asked why I laughed too hard at 9 a.m., why my hands shook when the room was too quiet, why my bag clanked, why I kept a hoodie on even in the heat. I was thirteen, and life felt too big to touch, too sharp to feel, too heavy to hold. So I drank to make the edges blur, to pour myself into so...Read more

I was eleven when the burn started to feel like home— not the fire, but the numb that followed. The breathtaking silence of my brain slowly shutting down. It wasn’t rebellion, not really. It was just to quiet the noise. I loved the way the world blurred just enough for me to forget that I was suppo...Read more

We passed pens like rumors in the bathroom, smoke curling into secrets we never wanted to keep. It wasn’t rebellion, more like trying to make the day a little softer around the edges, like padding a fall we already knew was coming. In health class, they showed us pictures of lungs blackened with sm...Read more

I was eleven when I learned the burn of vodka could quiet the voice in my head, the one that kept asking why am I still here? I drank from a water bottle filled with Bicardi in the back of 8th grade history, and the teacher’s words became white noise I floated in. No one asked. Or maybe I laughed ...Read more